Collateral Materials
4 Overlooked Ways Business Collateral Stumps Marketing
Written by Ashwin Satyanarayana for Gaebler Ventures
Small business owners often tend to rely too much on any one of the different ways of marketing. Some of them don't even do a thing because they just got some marketing collateral like flyers and brochures done; now that's enough, isn't it? It isn't. Here's why:
Pick up any successful business and you will barely see them handing out fliers, dusting their stacks of brochures or frantically handing out business cards.
They don't even have professional letter heads, unless there is a need. Spending time, money and effort in creating marketing collateral is detrimental to your business. It collides with your long-term goals. Counter Intuitive it might seem, but here's are those overlooked ways this marketing collateral kills your ability to do business:
Use better ways of marketing
With the advent of the Internet, a simple website will do against a kit containing a brochure, couple of flyers and business cards. There are now better ways of marketing like online promotion, for instance. Why go through the pain of creating marketing collateral only to see it ending up in trash cans? Why not use the power of the Internet to leverage your marketing in the right way?
Marketing collateral is barely effective
When was the last time you got a call from a customer who was deeply intrigued or very interested in what you have to offer communicated through a brochure or a flyer? Assuming that you did learn the art of hooking customers through your mind-boggling copy and effective collateral design; will they be able to retain your flyers, brochures or cards until they are ready to buy from you? Since your marketing collateral cannot be retained, they can barely retain them. Customers tend to lose these things and hence be unable to take advantage of your offers.
Marketing collateral makes you lazy
Imagine a typical scenario where your sales person approaches a prospect and talks about the possibility of meeting up to discuss your new service. He visits, sits across the table and hands out a brochure for the client to read and get to know more about the service. Where is the old sales charm of asking questions and finding solutions for clients gone? Where is the sales process here? Marketing collateral has an ugly way to make you or your staff lazy. Instead of feverishly pitching the product to convince prospects, we develop the habit of handing out brochures.
Distribution is painful and promises no results
It is indeed a pain to reach out to sizable number of people to make sense for your campaigning to work if you decide to campaign using your marketing collateral. If you have to physically reach out to your prospects, you can only meet so many prospects in a day and hence only so many brochures, flyers or cards you can give. This distribution system is ineffective, time consuming and expensive.
Ash has an undergraduate degree in engineering and an MBA from Ohio University. Today he is a corporate trainer, business coach and a freelance writer.
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